1901 - 2 .] Mr J. Fraser on Constitution of Matter and Ether. 51 
between them ; this process going on till, owing to the flattening, 
the ethereal particles forming the bubbles would become so crowded 
together, and their motions consequently so accelerated, that a re- 
action would take place, and the bubbles would spring apart for a 
■certain distance, but would not separate (unless they happened to 
come together very forcibly, in which case they would, after the 
above process, fly apart again), but would go through the same 
process again and again until their motion became exhausted. 
But how would their motion become exhausted ? Simply because 
at each spring apart a certain quantity of ether would have to be 
bodily displaced. The boy’s “sucker ” is held to the flat stone by 
a pressure of 15 lbs. to the square inch, and this weight would 
have to be lifted a certain distance in order to separate them, but 
these atoms are held together by a force of at least 17 billion 
pounds to the square inch, and no wonder that motion should soon 
become exhausted in trying to overcome such a force. The above, 
then, in my view, is the cause of radiation ; at each vibration a 
quantity of ether has to be lifted, so to speak, bodily lifted, just as 
the weight of the atmosphere has to be lifted in overcoming the 
adhesion of the “sucker”; this quantity of ether is crowded to- 
gether into a smaller space than it would naturally occupy, a part 
of the condensation dilating into the space left vacant by the 
approach of the atoms together again, but a great part of it spread- 
ing out in a spherical condensation or wave all around the point of 
vibration. Until the above explanation occurred to me it was a 
constant puzzle how it was that solid bodies, such as the earth and 
planets, etc., appeared to move freely through the ether without 
the slightest sign of loss of motion, but that the atoms and mole- 
cules of which these bodies are made up, which also move through 
the ether, some of them as projectiles, such as gases, could not so 
move without loss, appeared to me perfectly incomprehensible. 
But the reason now appears perfectly plain. Motion of translation 
through the ether is conserved in the way already set forth, pages 
46, 47 above, and motion of vibration is the only sufferer. The 
gaseous molecules lose nothing by their translatory motion ; only in 
separating again after each collision do they suffer loss, by having 
to, as it were, lift the ether bodily out of its place before separat- 
ing, and so crowding it together in the form of a wave. 
Let us now consider how atoms generally join in pairs to form 
